10 ms·

Tips for stroke-surviving software engineers

505 points by padolsey 1y ago

slater 1y ago
FYI that article is rendering light-grey text on a cream background color here (Safari, iOS), it’s barely readable
- jader201 1y ago
  Something may be off on your end. I’m on iPhone/Safari, and it’s white on black here. (Can always try reader mode, if you just want to read the content without worrying about fixing it.)
GianFabien 1y ago
Most of the advice is good for pre-stroke persons too. Might even avoid having one.
- oaiey 1y ago
  I think it is good advice for everyone. Pre Texting, Pre Email in the 90s I believe this kind of work was normal. All this self motivated, hyper context switching jobs we all do are relatively new compared to human evolvement. And we see the tax on us.
fennec-posix 1y ago
I think these are also good strategies for anyone who suffers from mental illness/burnout.
- ngcazz 1y ago
  ADHD...
- Muromec 1y ago
  All of that and parenting. Notifications off, camera off, WFH to the max and keeping the journal of where you were before attention was hijacked by the usual suspects.
- y-curious 1y ago
  Which tips would you apply to burnout? Because certainly AFAIK, you don’t really get legal protections from burnout
  - vpShane 1y ago
    With burnout it's simple, rest. Get away, go spiritually connect with something new, like laying on a beach or doing something completely new. Burnout is real and will make you _hate_ anything. I watch for burnout in my teams, and become burned out myself at times, but if you're burning out, tell somebody and get moved elsewhere. Coder doing some star-coder stuff the last 6 months, but can do sysadmin/devops things? Switch to that for a few weeks and come back mentally rested. Legal protections against burnout I'm not aware of but the illness associated with elevated stress levels and 'burn out' do create other health complications. Burn out is bad, bad stuff. Once somebody's burned out they can't do _anything_
    - cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
  - primitivesuave 1y ago
    I finally figured out how to address my burnout with a 10 day Vipassana meditation course (dhamma.org) - hope it potentially helps others as well.
Hannah203 1y ago
Good read. Recovery takes time, and steady small steps help rebuild skill and focus.
OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
Strikes close to home. 8 years ago I was in a bike accident that took me out for 4 months. I instantly felt dumber. The headaches became a fact of life, and the need to get out of the house early in the day to avoid brain fog creeping in became a routine. It... sucks. I've still progressed my career and made significant strides, and come to appreciate things that I never would have noticed if I kept on my previous trajectory, and while I don't think about it much anymore, for years it ate at me.
- az226 1y ago
  Do you still have headaches?
  - antisthenes 1y ago
    I was also in a bike accident that resulted in brain trauma (not a stroke), and yes, still get headaches 5 years later. But it does get better with exercise. I was able to reduce weekly headaches to about 1/month.
anonym29 1y ago
Thank you for sharing. Reading this, I'm reminded of the idea that we should all care about accessibility, because barring death or radical advances in restorative medical technology, we will all rely on accessibility tech in some way eventually. Besides what is listed here, have you observed anything that your coworkers or managers can do to help accommodate you? i.e. Is there a version of this for folks working with stroke-surviving software engineers?
- ehnto 1y ago
  I feel like any such advice would also be good advice for protecting the health of any of your staff.
- elric 1y ago
  The accessibility field is pretty mature, with useful and thorough guidelines like WCAG. But many people in the software industry either ignore accessibility completely, or think it's "only" about the blind, slap some alt text on images, and call it a day. We should try to do better.
weddpros 1y ago
Suffered a stroke in 2004 (migrainous infarction). Became half blind. Rested for a good year. Became a photographer for 8 years, then switched back again to software development. From then on, the limits were: WFH only, limit stress, run away from job if things go bad again. Nap if brain feels exhausted. Sleep, more and better. 20 years later (53yo), I'd say I'm doing great! Also fitness helps remind me to take care of the body...
- iberator 1y ago
  Whats your stack? (Software). Very impressive after 8 years to come back
  - weddpros 1y ago
    Today it's Go-TS-react-node-K8s-mongo-PG-RabbitMQ Well, I said "I'll never do IT again"... and when I say never, it usually happens in the end ;-)
- ownagefool 1y ago
  Tech has built literal industries of people trying to stress you out, and they mostly don't have actual tech skills or the empathy that comes with them so back it up. For me, I usually try to avoid anything where the working practices are strongly defined. Agile has long been a bad word. I'm glad you're doing well now.
  - ricardobayes 1y ago
    Unfortunately while the intentions around agile were noble it's pretty much a direct way to burnout or worse. The human mind is not designed to "sprint" run a marathon, metaphorically speaking, forever. I see older devs being active in the trade well into their 60s but even as I much younger person I don't see how agile development is sustainable for a ~50-year career.
    - ownagefool 1y ago
      The thing is, the core agile points from the manifesto are pretty much universally fine and can pretty much be boiled down to, "make changes fast, get feedback, gain more understanding faster". Pretty much everything that's been layered on top though has either nothing to do with the manifesto, or actively breaks it. i.e. there's a burning issue, I'll get to that after my sprint commitment, which was sold to let me finish work, but now only exists to stress me out to squeeze more widgets per unit of time, where the widgets pretty much never actually map back to anything actually tangible.
anonzzzies 1y ago
Good advice. I had one young too; I worked long days and had no life outside my company; it was in an economic downturn so I was also burning out (hindsight). I figured out what was important to me and that all changed everything.
croes 1y ago
> Let it hold state so your brain can judge rather than store and needlessly cogitate on stuff. Isn’t that needless cogitation something that helps creating new links in your brain and helps against cognitive decline in later ages?
- hshdhdhehd 1y ago
  Maybe it is better to invest cognition budget into more valuable things. Let AI write that test while you learn how Postgres Indexes work, for example. But if you are sick you cant do X "healthy thing for normal people". If you are sick you cant get that hour of exercise a day and do weight lifting and work out your brain etc.
sammy2255 1y ago
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- simoncion 1y ago
  That sounds like a "you" problem. The site's "light mode"/"dark mode" choice seems to follow my system settings just fine.
charles_f 1y ago
I haven't had a stroke (yet) but I find all that to be generally good advice. Good read!
buserror 1y ago
Had a stroke 2 months ago at 55, after an entire life (professionally since I'm 16) as a dev. I mostly followed these rules apart from when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking. 12-14h days. Just don't do that. I used to do that just fine and that's why I thought I was OK. I mean, I USED to go on in huge coding benders, did'nt I ? Well apparently not at 55, when the pressure has been on for months instead of weeks. Other things to watch -- diet! With the work came less free time, put on weight etc and all the good habits I had built for years, disappeared. And the worst bit you can think of is "Oh but I'm so CLOSE to being done, I'll just fix it up later when I can relax". Just don't. I lost all sensation on the right side. It is coming back slowly. I can still work, didn't lose speech or mobility or strength, I consider myself super-mega-lucky in that.
- padolsey 1y ago
  > when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking This is what bites. I have some really narrow interest areas that I can end up being obsessive about, to my own detriment. We have to be careful. Glad you didn't lose mobility and speech! I also feel lucky. I met others in neuro-rehab in far worse situations. For three months I couldn't walk and now thankfully do so with a stick and ankle brace. The hard stuff isn't the stuff you can see visually though. People see my floppy leg, and might presume that's the main thing, but nope. The big thing is the epilepsy, this constant monster present in the background. It's the invisible stuff that's often hard.
mmaaz 1y ago
Good advice. I didn’t have a stroke but a couple months ago I developed blindness in my left eye. It came down to my optic nerve being inflamed. I was later diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition called MOGAD which “attacks” the optic nerve. Thankfully my vision is approx 95% recovered by now. But I still can’t read, eg code on my laptop, which is scary (my right eye is basically making up for it). And I’m scared of another attack happening. So I’ve been really looking after my health and trying not to do the 12+ hr coding benders I used to do. I appreciate these tips!
- ares623 1y ago
  Doesn’t the immune system attack the eyes if not for a protective wall? Or is that just a myth.
  - mmaaz 1y ago
    Hmm not sure what you mean. In the case of MOGAD, it actually attacks the lining of the nerve. The MOG means myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein, which is a protein in the myelin sheath.
- padolsey 1y ago
  Thanks for sharing! I feel the fear of another attack with epilepsy too. It is terrifying. The doom and the walking on thin ice constantly hoping you're not gonna over-step or do the wrong thing. And all that at the same time as trying to live your life fully. Do you have any devices or aid software to help with the not-reading thing? I imagine it's all really fresh still and you're just taking it a day at a time?
  - mmaaz 1y ago
    Wow, I feel for you, that sounds really scary. Honestly no, I’ve scarcely changed how I work, except for being more strict about keeping a rigid schedule, forcing myself to take breaks, etc. It’s only my left eye that can’t read, the right eye is totally fine. But I do feel the eye strain come on sooner from relying on one eye.
- 1y ago
boardwaalk 1y ago
How strange to come across someone whose medical stuff so mirrors my own. I was just a decade older and don’t have epilepsy symptoms with meds. I can get behind all the advice here. Running out of “juice” and needing a break is very much thing. Before too but more so now. And taking a lot of semi stream of consciousness notes to help my more limited memory is too.
sh4rkb0y 1y ago
Could honestly change the title to "Tips for stroke-surviving software engineers (or anyone trying to avoid one)". All of us need these fresh little reminders that our brains are very different than the tech we regularly interact with every now and then. Recognize and respect your organic hardware!
keyle 1y ago
I haven't had a stroke but I did get a nasty tropical mono when I was young. You never quite recover from that one. I've got ibs since. My stomach just gets tired and stops. My mental focus feels the same. I sleep 9 hours a night, often 10 and I'm still tired. I feel I always have less stamina than other people. So this list is close to what I have always preached. Time as in energy is my most precious resource. Don't let processes suck the life out of you. They're there to serve the people not the other way around.
- simonbarker87 1y ago
  Gut directed hypnotherapy has worked wonders for my IBS. The research on it is really solid and was recommended to me by a registered dietician. The one I followed is called Nerva. Might be worth a try for you.
TechPulse01 1y ago
it's very helpful though i did'nt suffered a stroke until now
hiergiltdiestfu 1y ago
Reminds me of Fefe, hope he'll recover one day, too.
- lynx97 1y ago
  Wha? Felix had a stroke? <schocked> Didn't know that.
  - rurban 11mo ago
    His blog.fefe.de wasn't updated for several months now. I suspected such a thing
gnarcoregrizz 1y ago
Good tips. Not a stroke survivor but I developed epilepsy as a young adult… Not sure if work/stress had anything to do with it, but stress certainly triggers it! I’m still able to work as a software engineer, and my career has progressed, but the condition has held me back in a lot of ways.
symbogra 1y ago
This is good advice for non brain damaged engineers too (or maybe I am?)
foreigner 1y ago
> You, too, have a limited context window. Love this!
deleted 1y ago
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radjo 1y ago
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jve 1y ago
https://stroke.jonasr.app/dates/ https://stroke.jonasr.app/dates/ Quite a recovery. No it's not me, just a dev that works in the same field.
_gmkt 1y ago
I would add: 1. Go strictly keto 2. Walk as much as you can
- kakacik 1y ago
  Would remove that keto part, otherwise agree. Keto is great for lowering fat levels but long term effects can be terrible if unsupervised professionally, ie permanent internal organs damage, more than negating any benefits gained. Not sure why some people can only (mentally but brain drags rest of the body along) exist in extremes, when basically always some sort of moderate middle path is best in all aspects of life.
  - NotGMan 1y ago
    The permanent internal organ damage is pure bs and scare-mongering. Obviously you also get those on non-keto diets since non-keto people also get strokes, heart disease, fatty liver...
- stuffn 1y ago
  Keto has no solid association with any improved outcomes in terms of stroke and CVD. The gains are typically because of weight loss in which it is just another variant of CICO. You'd make the same gains in health by simply eating better overall and in accordance with your activity level. Keto however has numerous well researched negative health outcomes such as elevated LDL, ApoB, etc and these can be dramatically elevated in hyper-responders. Though, the science is also out on if mildly elevated LDL is anything to worry about. It's not a panacea but rather a trade off. Most people can stick to keto better because fats simply taste better and keep you feeling full longer and the alternative is much harder to stick to long term. It is only known to be effective for treatment resistant epilepsy. Any other benefit either can be equally attributed to the control (CICO + exercise) or are pseudoscience.
- AbstractH24 1y ago
  The type of keto required to control seizures is so strict its basicly impossible to live life with it. An apple can easily have more carbs in it than you are permitted in a day.
hshdhdhehd 1y ago
Good ME/CFS engineer advice too. Thanks for writing up OP
lynx97 1y ago
I don't get it, why is this mentioning "anti-discrimination legislation". Is being part of a minority prerequisite for personal health care?
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago
  > Is being part of a minority prerequisite for personal health care? Discrimination doesn’t have to be racial. You can be discriminated because of a handicap. From Cambridge dictionary > discriminate verb (TREAT DIFFERENTLY) > to treat a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc.
  - lynx97 1y ago
    Sure, I life with a disability, that my country categorizes as "100%" since 40 years. I am working 40h/week since more than 25 years. However, I have never made use of "discrimination laws", simply because I am convinced, if a workplace is toxic enough to force me to do that, it is best to leave. You might win the battle, but you will definitely loose the war. People, and upper management, will make you pay for playing crybaby.
- bobsmooth 1y ago
  Employers in most countries are required to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.
emmelaich 1y ago
All excellent advice even if you haven't suffered some health issue like stroke.
boobsbr 1y ago
> HEADPHONES, blinders, and 'No'. Eliminate unwanted inputs at the earliest point of entry. Open-floor offices, non-stop emails and chat messages, several meetings scattered throughout the week and the day. This kills productivity and increases stress and fatigue for people that need to concentrate to work on complex stuff. There's also the time you need to properly switch contexts.
- whalesalad 1y ago
  The word "blinders" really stood out to me in this. Does anyone have a recommendation for something that is literally like horse blinders but for people? I genuinely feel like my peripheral vision is "too adept" and overwhelming sometimes. If I cup my hands around my temples and over my brow, I feel a sense of calm. Trying to find a real product that does this - but I suppose I could just try to prototype my own with an old baseball hat or visor that has some vertical pieces on the side.
  - aendruk 1y ago
    Pop the lenses out of glacier glasses?
  - ta_09867534567 1y ago
    This might sound silly: I used post-it notes as human-blinders. I turnt the post-it note sideways, wrote `FOCUS TIME`, and put it on my temple, to block out my vision in that direction. I joked about it with my team before, and then just did so when I felt comfortable enough with them. I utilize this strategy at home for deep focus in a chaotic living room setup. 2x Post-its, baseball cap, and over-the-ears noise-cancelling headphones is peak `focus-time` I've found.
    - whalesalad 1y ago
      there are at least two of us!
  - bradyriddle 1y ago
    Check out pashmina‘s. It’s common to see people wearing them over their heads at EDM festivals if they are feeling over stimulated. I occasionally use them while I’m working for the reason you mention. I love my pash. Highly recommend.
jgant 1y ago
Good to see more awareness of this. 20 yrs working as a developer, suffered a stroke last year (ischaemic), in hospital for a week, back working out of necessity not too long after that. Gravity of the condition never occurred to me until much later; self employed, main income provider for the house, recovery full of fatigue and emotional turmoil. It's a slow road, I think I'm very lucky and definitely main changes are stress management, diet/lifestyle and rebalancing of work commitments. Everyone's different, but it's not as uncommon a condition as people think. But it certainly can be utterly devastating so please do look after each other and yourselves. Brain injury and recovery takes time and because it's not visible it's very easy to forget or overlook that it's there and healing
buserror 1y ago
Another thing if you are recovering and have limited dexterity in your hands, after trying pretty much ALL the voice recognition I could find, the VScode/copilot assistant is the best by far! I've now recovered enough that I can type/edit faster, but I still use it; I keep a Worksheet.md tab around and keep a whole running log of stuff, LLM prompts etc
throwaway290 1y ago
It's very depressing how the article says "you don't have to do it alone! use AI" ah this age where "not alone" means "AI"... How about, enjoy good connections with nice people. Both in personal and work. Maybe those people can even see the warning signs and tell you to stop before you have a stroke.
- bobsmooth 1y ago
  He says to use AI as a knowledge offloading tool. He literally says that he enjoys meetings.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    wow I should have expected it to get only more depressing from replies I guess) I'm not talking about meetings. relationships do not reduce to zoom meetings and this is not about "knowledge offloading". that's a text file can do it. the key word is "help". the thing people did for each other;)
a5c11 1y ago
Didn't have a stroke, but in addition to developing software, I developed "software" brain issues too.
drtournier 1y ago
OP thank you for this generous text. I would add that these tips are amazing for people with post-covid/long-covid/brain-fog too
- andhuman 1y ago
  Yup! I follow these and I also take walks, those can be helpful to relax and let the mind rest for a bit.
psnosignaluk 1y ago
This is applicable to far more than stroke victims. Any manner of brain interference should have the same ruleset. Reading through the comments, this ruleset should apply to everyone regardless of their medical situation. Chiming in with a +1 to fitness, and diet. It helps, massively.
artur_makly 1y ago
Stay away from vibe coding. It will cause more stress and provoke aneurysms -;)
sarmike31 1y ago
This was a very good to-the-point post! Applies to everyone, and you only truly seem to wake up to care for your health when you lost it first.
- 0xdada 1y ago
  I managed to wake up in my early 30s, by watching my parents' health slowly start failing starting in their 50s.
- roxolotl 1y ago
  Yea this is my takeaway as well. All of the advice is applicable to everyone. Health should always come first.
davedx 1y ago
I don’t know if this is as niche as the author thinks: there’s a lot of great advice for non-stroke survivors in there too.
NotGMan 1y ago
DMSO can allegedly help some people improve after stroke, if applied soon enough. https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dmso-could-save-millions-from-brain?utm_source=publication-search https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dmso-could-save-millions-...
hemmert 1y ago
Excellent advice, for everybody. Thank you!
hotpotat 1y ago
Interesting to see all the people in this thread who had a stroke. I had a mild and then moderate cerebellar stroke within a 7 day span about two years ago. I remember being on the stroke neurology floor of the hospital with a lot of bed ridden people who had also suffered them. I know because, within 24 hours, I was doing hourly walking laps with my nurses because I was bored. In other words, I was one of the lucky ones. Within a week I was back at work — not because I felt pressured to by them, they were completely understanding, but because I had no more symptoms that were experienced simply because I was sitting down to work. I also see some advice about listening to your body after the fact, which I fully agree with. In my case, without going into too much detail, the stroke might not have happened if I had listened to my body beforehand, as it was caused by an injury I could have prevented. So if I could give any advice from this place of experience it would be to listen to your body, and try to hear it when your fears and ego are shouting.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  I know a vascular neurologist who says that the average age of his patients has dropped by nearly a decade in the last five years. Many more "young" (<60) men with minor strokes, and more frequent serious strokes in the 40s for both sexes. He's treated as many under 30 y/o stroke patients in the last two years than he did in the first two decades of his career. He's a few years from retirement and basically completely rattled by this sudden shift.
  - croisillon 1y ago
    i don't know how to word it better than: there's much we don't know yet about the extent of ~"long covid", or "down the road covid outcomes"
  - hotpotat 1y ago
    I have an out-there hypothesis I’d want to test. Much of the population has one or more MTHFR mutations, which can increase homocysteine if left untreated and that’s been linked to increased risk in stroke. Treatment includes more B vitamins. I wonder if the declining nutrition in foods and lack of B vitamins has anything to do with this.
gwbas1c 1y ago
I haven't had a stroke, and many of these tips are, IMO, important for the unimpaired productive software developer.
delichon 1y ago
I'm terrified by the possibility of a stroke that would disable me, not in a way that would let me write here about my experience with it, but leaving me dependent on the care of others. I'd prefer to shuffle off of this mortal coil, but such a sudden event may not allow that choice. So I fantasize about writing a suicide program that would take care of business if I fail to pass a bespoke Turing (delichon) test. But I doubt my ability to write that with enough nines of reliability to be willing to deploy it. I tried to implant that algorithm into my brother, but he declines to go to prison for me, the jerk. If I live long enough maybe AI tech will become reliable enough for this application, but I doubt it will be soon.
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  This is essentially my greatest fear as well. Most of my supplementation stack revolves around the desire to prevent this. I take ~30 supplements a day.
wedgel 1y ago
I had a stroke roughly eleven years ago. When the stroke started, I got really creeped out. I was in an elevator and I thought a stranger was reaching around me from behind to grab me. It was my right arm. I cracked a joke about it, I didn't know it, but I wasn't soeaking. Just mumbling and making creepy gutteral noises when I thought I was laughing. Then the face droop. Followed by my right hand becoming locked in a fist. It took months on rehab to get it open. And it lost a lot of function.
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  damn, sorry friend. Must be terrifying to feel your body essentially betraying you.
wjnc 1y ago
For those in workplaces that treat you well. One suggestion that is not in OP: Tell others, explain, expand, give presentations on what you went through. Not only will it help your environment understand WHAT you are doing, they then are also able to understand the WHY. I've had my share of colleagues with afflictions. Your environment must know to understand! Otherwise, you are only allowing them to react to resulting situations, without understanding of the why. Second order benefit is that if people would do this more, general kindness towards how personal situations influence business situations would rise. We need more kindness, from understanding each other. (I understand this is an advice that does not work for those workplaces where HR is the enemy, the boss is their to get you, co-workers are in a free for all for bonuses and promotions. I hope most of us are not in that kind of work situations.)
- MisterTea 1y ago
  > I hope most of us are not in that kind of work situations. It is unfortunately very common and becoming more common with the rise of PE.
  - donbox 1y ago
    Sorry what does PE mean here. Thanks
    - MisterTea 1y ago
      Private Equity.
cl3misch 1y ago
This advice could be translated 1:1 to ADHD (at least in my experience). You have to be very mindful with your attention and energy levels. I'm wondering if some underlying mechanism in the brain is similar between having ADHD and having suffered a stroke. Or maybe it's just the conscious effort how to handle the symptoms that's similar.
- accrual 1y ago
  In my experience it feels more like the latter - a similar way to manage symptoms rather than a similar root cause. From the article it sounds like OP knows exactly where to spend attention and focus, but needs to guard it carefully (and manage expectations) or else risk falling from their island of stability.
- triggercut 1y ago
  My father recently had a stroke, we both have ADHD, his is untreated. Since the stroke, most of his impacts have been cognitive, not muscular and most of his cognitive issues relate to worsening executive functioning across all executive functions, but particularly exacerbating the worst issues attributed to ADHD. As you would know ADHD is a problem with regulation, not capacity however with this stroke it appears that his capacity has fundamentally changed and is further impacted by the dysregulation. It's still early, and we haven't seen the specialist yet but I'm taking this hypothesis to them and (if I remember to) will update/edit here with their response.
wonderwonder 1y ago
Question to the OP or anyone else that has experienced something similar. Have you tried grey area or Peptide space medications like Dihexa, P-21, Semax, etc to see if there are any benefits there? Very much self experimentation but they do work in mouse models as well as Russian medicine. I'm not encouraging anyone to experiment, just interested to see if anyone that has undergone experiences like OP's has experimented. I have not experienced a stroke or similar but I just started a 6 - 8 week Dihexa course, low dose to test tolerance and I find I am experiencing benefits such as improved recall. I am learning guitar as my test suite. Something I have attempted multiple times before and given up on relatively quickly. 2 weeks in so far. My intention is to drop the Dihexa at week 8 and then switch to Semax. The theory being that Dihexa improves synaptogenesis but inhibits pruning. Semax allows for pruning but optimizes the efficiency of existing used synapses. Dihexa is an experimental Alzheimer's medication and Semax is a Russian post stroke drug
accrual 1y ago
Thank you for sharing this. Keep up the good work and healing, OP! It's incredible that you've continued to be polite and to do as much as you can through your health struggle. Setting and enforcing boundaries can be difficult for some, especially when you're feeling hazy and not operating at 100%. I like that you pointed out being polite can be expensive sometimes. This is excellent advice for anyone with knowledge based work though. Distractions, messages, pop-ups, asks, meetings, etc. are the leading reason I don't get as much done as I could. Some of your items could definitely help here.
consumer451 1y ago
I have not had a stroke, but a few years ago I noticed my eyesight was getting strange. There were many other things including a very fuzzy brain, and wanting to stay in bed for weeks. I thought I was just sad until the eyesight issue. It turned out I had Advanced Neurological Lyme disease. It took a couple years to recover from it. I also have Cluster Headaches, one of the most painful medical conditions known to science. Losing my the ability to think clearly, was worse. As someone who uses my brain for work, the depression that arose from losing my mental faculties was very significant. I searched TFA for depression and did not see a mention. If anyone is dealing with a neurological issue like this, I would imagine that second order effects like depression are common, correct?
odyssey7 1y ago
Oh gosh, even with the laws that should provide cover, the pushback you’ll encounter in academia from so many individuals with limited life experience who are trained only to rigidly follow blanket policies. But if you feel like you won’t speak up because it’s not that bad, remember the next person who will come after you. When you have the capacity to push systems to do better, it’s better for everyone if you exercise it.
underlipton 1y ago
I think AI as it's currently implemented is a plague upon humanity, but I do appreciate it helping me to locate the word that's on the tip of my tongue and which my battered brain can't seem to draw a neural route to, so that I'm not sitting there for 20 minutes trying to fight the Einstellung effect and brain fog.
theturtle 1y ago
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sonicggg 1y ago
Isn't it better to prevent than remediate it? It's not rocket science. Mediterranean diet, daily nattokinase, absolutely no alcohol at any time, exercise
eternalreturn 1y ago
Going through several panic attacks with stroke-level blood pressure elevation had a similar impact on my worldview and approach to work. Slow down. Prioritize your own health and well-being. Focus on the essentials and cut out everything else. If you are in pain, see a doctor before you end up in urgent care like I did.
ericye16 1y ago
Are there types of disability insurance you can buy that would cover you as a software engineer in case something like this happens and you're not able to go back to work or not work as effectively in this field? Does anyone have experiences with this?
chillz2 1y ago
Some of these apply to other neurodivergents like myself. One thing I struggle with is that the only time I seem to really get in the flow is when no one is around and no one else is working. Some form of stimulant is needed, but no stimulant I can use gets me to the point where I can get into more flow than I can when no one is around. I sometimes dream of how much I could do if I just lived at my office alone. This is sad and frustrating, because I don’t want that life where I cannot have a life of my own and where I cannot interact with people at work or it disables my ability to get things done. Nutrition and some form of exercise are also incredibly important, especially as you get older. Not everyone needs the same things, so don’t let others tell you what is the “right thing for everyone”- there’s no such thing.
bigolnik 1y ago
Hey folks, my wife is a speech language pathologist who specializes in stroke rehab, I sent her this post and this comment section and she sent me this to share: As a stroke/neuro rehab speech-language pathologist that is married to a web dev/engineering manager (that obviously sent me this blogpost), everyone reading needs to listen to this author's sound advice for prevention of CVA as well as for post-stroke management. We are seeing younger age strokes more frequently, especially those with jobs that are high stress and low physicality (read: you folks!). Thank you to the writer for spreading this info and awareness… I can confirm it is not as niche as one might think and for best outcomes you have to respond FAST (look at Face, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to call 911). PSA of the day!
AbstractH24 1y ago
Wow, this article resonated so much more than I expected when I clicked on it. Mostly because I have epilepsy without the stroke, and after decades of it being stable, around 2021 it got a bit harder to control and started to interfere with my daily living for the first time. A couple points I'd add/double down on: 1. Find yourself a team of really good folks to work with who treat you as a human - At the peak of my epilepsy acutely interfering with my life, I was at a startup that, after being devastated by lockdowns, decided to scale down from 100 employees to 6 and start over. When I told the founder I'd need a month off twice within the span of 4 months for some very invasive surgeries, I fully expected him to let me go, as he was legally permitted. He told me to take all the time I needed, and for that I'll forever be indebted. 2. Avoid the urge to "other" yourself - the only brain we're exposed to 24/7 is our own. That makes it easy to lose track of what's baseline and easy to assume every time you forget something or otherwise "glitch," it's a sign you are flawed in ways others aren't. That's not true, everyone forgets things. 3. It takes time to recover emotionally - This week marks 3 years since my last big surgery, and I'm just past 2 since things started to really stabilize. Only in the last few months have I stopped walking around constantly viewing myself through the lens of a condition and with a sense of self-doubt and "othering". So be kind and patient with yourself. It takes time. 4. Reddit has some very supportive communities to help answer questions and remind you that you're not alone (including r/epilepsy). But don't get overly involved in them for too long, because then it becomes easy to define yourself and your tribe through your medical condition. 5. If epilepsy or some other condition prevents you from getting a driver's license, there's a lot to say for living in NYC or SF. Two of the only places in America where it's completely normal to live without a car and you wont stand out or feel excluded.

505 points by padolsey 1y ago

slater 1y ago

FYI that article is rendering light-grey text on a cream background color here (Safari, iOS), it’s barely readable

jader201 1y ago
Something may be off on your end. I’m on iPhone/Safari, and it’s white on black here. (Can always try reader mode, if you just want to read the content without worrying about fixing it.)

GianFabien 1y ago

Most of the advice is good for pre-stroke persons too. Might even avoid having one.

oaiey 1y ago
I think it is good advice for everyone. Pre Texting, Pre Email in the 90s I believe this kind of work was normal. All this self motivated, hyper context switching jobs we all do are relatively new compared to human evolvement. And we see the tax on us.

fennec-posix 1y ago

I think these are also good strategies for anyone who suffers from mental illness/burnout.

ngcazz 1y ago
ADHD...
Muromec 1y ago
All of that and parenting. Notifications off, camera off, WFH to the max and keeping the journal of where you were before attention was hijacked by the usual suspects.
y-curious 1y ago
Which tips would you apply to burnout? Because certainly AFAIK, you don’t really get legal protections from burnout
- vpShane 1y ago
  With burnout it's simple, rest. Get away, go spiritually connect with something new, like laying on a beach or doing something completely new. Burnout is real and will make you _hate_ anything. I watch for burnout in my teams, and become burned out myself at times, but if you're burning out, tell somebody and get moved elsewhere. Coder doing some star-coder stuff the last 6 months, but can do sysadmin/devops things? Switch to that for a few weeks and come back mentally rested. Legal protections against burnout I'm not aware of but the illness associated with elevated stress levels and 'burn out' do create other health complications. Burn out is bad, bad stuff. Once somebody's burned out they can't do _anything_
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
- primitivesuave 1y ago
  I finally figured out how to address my burnout with a 10 day Vipassana meditation course (dhamma.org) - hope it potentially helps others as well.

Hannah203 1y ago

Good read. Recovery takes time, and steady small steps help rebuild skill and focus.

OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago

Strikes close to home. 8 years ago I was in a bike accident that took me out for 4 months. I instantly felt dumber. The headaches became a fact of life, and the need to get out of the house early in the day to avoid brain fog creeping in became a routine. It... sucks. I've still progressed my career and made significant strides, and come to appreciate things that I never would have noticed if I kept on my previous trajectory, and while I don't think about it much anymore, for years it ate at me.

az226 1y ago
Do you still have headaches?
- antisthenes 1y ago
  I was also in a bike accident that resulted in brain trauma (not a stroke), and yes, still get headaches 5 years later. But it does get better with exercise. I was able to reduce weekly headaches to about 1/month.

anonym29 1y ago

Thank you for sharing. Reading this, I'm reminded of the idea that we should all care about accessibility, because barring death or radical advances in restorative medical technology, we will all rely on accessibility tech in some way eventually. Besides what is listed here, have you observed anything that your coworkers or managers can do to help accommodate you? i.e. Is there a version of this for folks working with stroke-surviving software engineers?

ehnto 1y ago
I feel like any such advice would also be good advice for protecting the health of any of your staff.
elric 1y ago
The accessibility field is pretty mature, with useful and thorough guidelines like WCAG. But many people in the software industry either ignore accessibility completely, or think it's "only" about the blind, slap some alt text on images, and call it a day. We should try to do better.

weddpros 1y ago

Suffered a stroke in 2004 (migrainous infarction). Became half blind. Rested for a good year. Became a photographer for 8 years, then switched back again to software development. From then on, the limits were: WFH only, limit stress, run away from job if things go bad again. Nap if brain feels exhausted. Sleep, more and better. 20 years later (53yo), I'd say I'm doing great! Also fitness helps remind me to take care of the body...

iberator 1y ago
Whats your stack? (Software). Very impressive after 8 years to come back
- weddpros 1y ago
  Today it's Go-TS-react-node-K8s-mongo-PG-RabbitMQ Well, I said "I'll never do IT again"... and when I say never, it usually happens in the end ;-)
ownagefool 1y ago
Tech has built literal industries of people trying to stress you out, and they mostly don't have actual tech skills or the empathy that comes with them so back it up. For me, I usually try to avoid anything where the working practices are strongly defined. Agile has long been a bad word. I'm glad you're doing well now.
- ricardobayes 1y ago
  Unfortunately while the intentions around agile were noble it's pretty much a direct way to burnout or worse. The human mind is not designed to "sprint" run a marathon, metaphorically speaking, forever. I see older devs being active in the trade well into their 60s but even as I much younger person I don't see how agile development is sustainable for a ~50-year career.
  - ownagefool 1y ago
    The thing is, the core agile points from the manifesto are pretty much universally fine and can pretty much be boiled down to, "make changes fast, get feedback, gain more understanding faster". Pretty much everything that's been layered on top though has either nothing to do with the manifesto, or actively breaks it. i.e. there's a burning issue, I'll get to that after my sprint commitment, which was sold to let me finish work, but now only exists to stress me out to squeeze more widgets per unit of time, where the widgets pretty much never actually map back to anything actually tangible.

anonzzzies 1y ago

Good advice. I had one young too; I worked long days and had no life outside my company; it was in an economic downturn so I was also burning out (hindsight). I figured out what was important to me and that all changed everything.

croes 1y ago

> Let it hold state so your brain can judge rather than store and needlessly cogitate on stuff. Isn’t that needless cogitation something that helps creating new links in your brain and helps against cognitive decline in later ages?

hshdhdhehd 1y ago
Maybe it is better to invest cognition budget into more valuable things. Let AI write that test while you learn how Postgres Indexes work, for example. But if you are sick you cant do X "healthy thing for normal people". If you are sick you cant get that hour of exercise a day and do weight lifting and work out your brain etc.

sammy2255 1y ago

[flagged]

simoncion 1y ago
That sounds like a "you" problem. The site's "light mode"/"dark mode" choice seems to follow my system settings just fine.

charles_f 1y ago

I haven't had a stroke (yet) but I find all that to be generally good advice. Good read!

buserror 1y ago

Had a stroke 2 months ago at 55, after an entire life (professionally since I'm 16) as a dev. I mostly followed these rules apart from when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking. 12-14h days. Just don't do that. I used to do that just fine and that's why I thought I was OK. I mean, I USED to go on in huge coding benders, did'nt I ? Well apparently not at 55, when the pressure has been on for months instead of weeks. Other things to watch -- diet! With the work came less free time, put on weight etc and all the good habits I had built for years, disappeared. And the worst bit you can think of is "Oh but I'm so CLOSE to being done, I'll just fix it up later when I can relax". Just don't. I lost all sensation on the right side. It is coming back slowly. I can still work, didn't lose speech or mobility or strength, I consider myself super-mega-lucky in that.

padolsey 1y ago
> when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking This is what bites. I have some really narrow interest areas that I can end up being obsessive about, to my own detriment. We have to be careful. Glad you didn't lose mobility and speech! I also feel lucky. I met others in neuro-rehab in far worse situations. For three months I couldn't walk and now thankfully do so with a stick and ankle brace. The hard stuff isn't the stuff you can see visually though. People see my floppy leg, and might presume that's the main thing, but nope. The big thing is the epilepsy, this constant monster present in the background. It's the invisible stuff that's often hard.

mmaaz 1y ago

Good advice. I didn’t have a stroke but a couple months ago I developed blindness in my left eye. It came down to my optic nerve being inflamed. I was later diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition called MOGAD which “attacks” the optic nerve. Thankfully my vision is approx 95% recovered by now. But I still can’t read, eg code on my laptop, which is scary (my right eye is basically making up for it). And I’m scared of another attack happening. So I’ve been really looking after my health and trying not to do the 12+ hr coding benders I used to do. I appreciate these tips!

ares623 1y ago
Doesn’t the immune system attack the eyes if not for a protective wall? Or is that just a myth.
- mmaaz 1y ago
  Hmm not sure what you mean. In the case of MOGAD, it actually attacks the lining of the nerve. The MOG means myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein, which is a protein in the myelin sheath.
padolsey 1y ago
Thanks for sharing! I feel the fear of another attack with epilepsy too. It is terrifying. The doom and the walking on thin ice constantly hoping you're not gonna over-step or do the wrong thing. And all that at the same time as trying to live your life fully. Do you have any devices or aid software to help with the not-reading thing? I imagine it's all really fresh still and you're just taking it a day at a time?
- mmaaz 1y ago
  Wow, I feel for you, that sounds really scary. Honestly no, I’ve scarcely changed how I work, except for being more strict about keeping a rigid schedule, forcing myself to take breaks, etc. It’s only my left eye that can’t read, the right eye is totally fine. But I do feel the eye strain come on sooner from relying on one eye.
1y ago

boardwaalk 1y ago

How strange to come across someone whose medical stuff so mirrors my own. I was just a decade older and don’t have epilepsy symptoms with meds. I can get behind all the advice here. Running out of “juice” and needing a break is very much thing. Before too but more so now. And taking a lot of semi stream of consciousness notes to help my more limited memory is too.

sh4rkb0y 1y ago

Could honestly change the title to "Tips for stroke-surviving software engineers (or anyone trying to avoid one)". All of us need these fresh little reminders that our brains are very different than the tech we regularly interact with every now and then. Recognize and respect your organic hardware!

keyle 1y ago

I haven't had a stroke but I did get a nasty tropical mono when I was young. You never quite recover from that one. I've got ibs since. My stomach just gets tired and stops. My mental focus feels the same. I sleep 9 hours a night, often 10 and I'm still tired. I feel I always have less stamina than other people. So this list is close to what I have always preached. Time as in energy is my most precious resource. Don't let processes suck the life out of you. They're there to serve the people not the other way around.

simonbarker87 1y ago
Gut directed hypnotherapy has worked wonders for my IBS. The research on it is really solid and was recommended to me by a registered dietician. The one I followed is called Nerva. Might be worth a try for you.

TechPulse01 1y ago

it's very helpful though i did'nt suffered a stroke until now

hiergiltdiestfu 1y ago

Reminds me of Fefe, hope he'll recover one day, too.

lynx97 1y ago
Wha? Felix had a stroke? <schocked> Didn't know that.
- rurban 11mo ago
  His blog.fefe.de wasn't updated for several months now. I suspected such a thing

gnarcoregrizz 1y ago

Good tips. Not a stroke survivor but I developed epilepsy as a young adult… Not sure if work/stress had anything to do with it, but stress certainly triggers it! I’m still able to work as a software engineer, and my career has progressed, but the condition has held me back in a lot of ways.

symbogra 1y ago

This is good advice for non brain damaged engineers too (or maybe I am?)

foreigner 1y ago

> You, too, have a limited context window. Love this!

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

radjo 1y ago

[flagged]

jve 1y ago

https://stroke.jonasr.app/dates/ https://stroke.jonasr.app/dates/ Quite a recovery. No it's not me, just a dev that works in the same field.

_gmkt 1y ago

I would add: 1. Go strictly keto 2. Walk as much as you can

kakacik 1y ago
Would remove that keto part, otherwise agree. Keto is great for lowering fat levels but long term effects can be terrible if unsupervised professionally, ie permanent internal organs damage, more than negating any benefits gained. Not sure why some people can only (mentally but brain drags rest of the body along) exist in extremes, when basically always some sort of moderate middle path is best in all aspects of life.
- NotGMan 1y ago
  The permanent internal organ damage is pure bs and scare-mongering. Obviously you also get those on non-keto diets since non-keto people also get strokes, heart disease, fatty liver...
stuffn 1y ago
Keto has no solid association with any improved outcomes in terms of stroke and CVD. The gains are typically because of weight loss in which it is just another variant of CICO. You'd make the same gains in health by simply eating better overall and in accordance with your activity level. Keto however has numerous well researched negative health outcomes such as elevated LDL, ApoB, etc and these can be dramatically elevated in hyper-responders. Though, the science is also out on if mildly elevated LDL is anything to worry about. It's not a panacea but rather a trade off. Most people can stick to keto better because fats simply taste better and keep you feeling full longer and the alternative is much harder to stick to long term. It is only known to be effective for treatment resistant epilepsy. Any other benefit either can be equally attributed to the control (CICO + exercise) or are pseudoscience.
AbstractH24 1y ago
The type of keto required to control seizures is so strict its basicly impossible to live life with it. An apple can easily have more carbs in it than you are permitted in a day.

hshdhdhehd 1y ago

Good ME/CFS engineer advice too. Thanks for writing up OP

lynx97 1y ago

I don't get it, why is this mentioning "anti-discrimination legislation". Is being part of a minority prerequisite for personal health care?

throw-qqqqq 1y ago
> Is being part of a minority prerequisite for personal health care? Discrimination doesn’t have to be racial. You can be discriminated because of a handicap. From Cambridge dictionary > discriminate verb (TREAT DIFFERENTLY) > to treat a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc.
- lynx97 1y ago
  Sure, I life with a disability, that my country categorizes as "100%" since 40 years. I am working 40h/week since more than 25 years. However, I have never made use of "discrimination laws", simply because I am convinced, if a workplace is toxic enough to force me to do that, it is best to leave. You might win the battle, but you will definitely loose the war. People, and upper management, will make you pay for playing crybaby.
bobsmooth 1y ago
Employers in most countries are required to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.

emmelaich 1y ago

All excellent advice even if you haven't suffered some health issue like stroke.

boobsbr 1y ago

> HEADPHONES, blinders, and 'No'. Eliminate unwanted inputs at the earliest point of entry. Open-floor offices, non-stop emails and chat messages, several meetings scattered throughout the week and the day. This kills productivity and increases stress and fatigue for people that need to concentrate to work on complex stuff. There's also the time you need to properly switch contexts.

whalesalad 1y ago
The word "blinders" really stood out to me in this. Does anyone have a recommendation for something that is literally like horse blinders but for people? I genuinely feel like my peripheral vision is "too adept" and overwhelming sometimes. If I cup my hands around my temples and over my brow, I feel a sense of calm. Trying to find a real product that does this - but I suppose I could just try to prototype my own with an old baseball hat or visor that has some vertical pieces on the side.
- aendruk 1y ago
  Pop the lenses out of glacier glasses?
- ta_09867534567 1y ago
  This might sound silly: I used post-it notes as human-blinders. I turnt the post-it note sideways, wrote `FOCUS TIME`, and put it on my temple, to block out my vision in that direction. I joked about it with my team before, and then just did so when I felt comfortable enough with them. I utilize this strategy at home for deep focus in a chaotic living room setup. 2x Post-its, baseball cap, and over-the-ears noise-cancelling headphones is peak `focus-time` I've found.
  - whalesalad 1y ago
    there are at least two of us!
- bradyriddle 1y ago
  Check out pashmina‘s. It’s common to see people wearing them over their heads at EDM festivals if they are feeling over stimulated. I occasionally use them while I’m working for the reason you mention. I love my pash. Highly recommend.

jgant 1y ago

Good to see more awareness of this. 20 yrs working as a developer, suffered a stroke last year (ischaemic), in hospital for a week, back working out of necessity not too long after that. Gravity of the condition never occurred to me until much later; self employed, main income provider for the house, recovery full of fatigue and emotional turmoil. It's a slow road, I think I'm very lucky and definitely main changes are stress management, diet/lifestyle and rebalancing of work commitments. Everyone's different, but it's not as uncommon a condition as people think. But it certainly can be utterly devastating so please do look after each other and yourselves. Brain injury and recovery takes time and because it's not visible it's very easy to forget or overlook that it's there and healing

buserror 1y ago

Another thing if you are recovering and have limited dexterity in your hands, after trying pretty much ALL the voice recognition I could find, the VScode/copilot assistant is the best by far! I've now recovered enough that I can type/edit faster, but I still use it; I keep a Worksheet.md tab around and keep a whole running log of stuff, LLM prompts etc

throwaway290 1y ago

It's very depressing how the article says "you don't have to do it alone! use AI" ah this age where "not alone" means "AI"... How about, enjoy good connections with nice people. Both in personal and work. Maybe those people can even see the warning signs and tell you to stop before you have a stroke.

bobsmooth 1y ago
He says to use AI as a knowledge offloading tool. He literally says that he enjoys meetings.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  wow I should have expected it to get only more depressing from replies I guess) I'm not talking about meetings. relationships do not reduce to zoom meetings and this is not about "knowledge offloading". that's a text file can do it. the key word is "help". the thing people did for each other;)

a5c11 1y ago

Didn't have a stroke, but in addition to developing software, I developed "software" brain issues too.

drtournier 1y ago

OP thank you for this generous text. I would add that these tips are amazing for people with post-covid/long-covid/brain-fog too

andhuman 1y ago
Yup! I follow these and I also take walks, those can be helpful to relax and let the mind rest for a bit.

psnosignaluk 1y ago

This is applicable to far more than stroke victims. Any manner of brain interference should have the same ruleset. Reading through the comments, this ruleset should apply to everyone regardless of their medical situation. Chiming in with a +1 to fitness, and diet. It helps, massively.

artur_makly 1y ago

Stay away from vibe coding. It will cause more stress and provoke aneurysms -;)

sarmike31 1y ago

This was a very good to-the-point post! Applies to everyone, and you only truly seem to wake up to care for your health when you lost it first.

0xdada 1y ago
I managed to wake up in my early 30s, by watching my parents' health slowly start failing starting in their 50s.
roxolotl 1y ago
Yea this is my takeaway as well. All of the advice is applicable to everyone. Health should always come first.

davedx 1y ago

I don’t know if this is as niche as the author thinks: there’s a lot of great advice for non-stroke survivors in there too.

NotGMan 1y ago

DMSO can allegedly help some people improve after stroke, if applied soon enough. https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dmso-could-save-millions-from-brain?utm_source=publication-search https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dmso-could-save-millions-...

hemmert 1y ago

Excellent advice, for everybody. Thank you!

hotpotat 1y ago

Interesting to see all the people in this thread who had a stroke. I had a mild and then moderate cerebellar stroke within a 7 day span about two years ago. I remember being on the stroke neurology floor of the hospital with a lot of bed ridden people who had also suffered them. I know because, within 24 hours, I was doing hourly walking laps with my nurses because I was bored. In other words, I was one of the lucky ones. Within a week I was back at work — not because I felt pressured to by them, they were completely understanding, but because I had no more symptoms that were experienced simply because I was sitting down to work. I also see some advice about listening to your body after the fact, which I fully agree with. In my case, without going into too much detail, the stroke might not have happened if I had listened to my body beforehand, as it was caused by an injury I could have prevented. So if I could give any advice from this place of experience it would be to listen to your body, and try to hear it when your fears and ego are shouting.

giraffe_lady 1y ago
I know a vascular neurologist who says that the average age of his patients has dropped by nearly a decade in the last five years. Many more "young" (<60) men with minor strokes, and more frequent serious strokes in the 40s for both sexes. He's treated as many under 30 y/o stroke patients in the last two years than he did in the first two decades of his career. He's a few years from retirement and basically completely rattled by this sudden shift.
- croisillon 1y ago
  i don't know how to word it better than: there's much we don't know yet about the extent of ~"long covid", or "down the road covid outcomes"
- hotpotat 1y ago
  I have an out-there hypothesis I’d want to test. Much of the population has one or more MTHFR mutations, which can increase homocysteine if left untreated and that’s been linked to increased risk in stroke. Treatment includes more B vitamins. I wonder if the declining nutrition in foods and lack of B vitamins has anything to do with this.

gwbas1c 1y ago

I haven't had a stroke, and many of these tips are, IMO, important for the unimpaired productive software developer.

delichon 1y ago

I'm terrified by the possibility of a stroke that would disable me, not in a way that would let me write here about my experience with it, but leaving me dependent on the care of others. I'd prefer to shuffle off of this mortal coil, but such a sudden event may not allow that choice. So I fantasize about writing a suicide program that would take care of business if I fail to pass a bespoke Turing (delichon) test. But I doubt my ability to write that with enough nines of reliability to be willing to deploy it. I tried to implant that algorithm into my brother, but he declines to go to prison for me, the jerk. If I live long enough maybe AI tech will become reliable enough for this application, but I doubt it will be soon.

wonderwonder 1y ago
This is essentially my greatest fear as well. Most of my supplementation stack revolves around the desire to prevent this. I take ~30 supplements a day.

wedgel 1y ago

I had a stroke roughly eleven years ago. When the stroke started, I got really creeped out. I was in an elevator and I thought a stranger was reaching around me from behind to grab me. It was my right arm. I cracked a joke about it, I didn't know it, but I wasn't soeaking. Just mumbling and making creepy gutteral noises when I thought I was laughing. Then the face droop. Followed by my right hand becoming locked in a fist. It took months on rehab to get it open. And it lost a lot of function.

wonderwonder 1y ago
damn, sorry friend. Must be terrifying to feel your body essentially betraying you.

wjnc 1y ago

For those in workplaces that treat you well. One suggestion that is not in OP: Tell others, explain, expand, give presentations on what you went through. Not only will it help your environment understand WHAT you are doing, they then are also able to understand the WHY. I've had my share of colleagues with afflictions. Your environment must know to understand! Otherwise, you are only allowing them to react to resulting situations, without understanding of the why. Second order benefit is that if people would do this more, general kindness towards how personal situations influence business situations would rise. We need more kindness, from understanding each other. (I understand this is an advice that does not work for those workplaces where HR is the enemy, the boss is their to get you, co-workers are in a free for all for bonuses and promotions. I hope most of us are not in that kind of work situations.)

MisterTea 1y ago
> I hope most of us are not in that kind of work situations. It is unfortunately very common and becoming more common with the rise of PE.
- donbox 1y ago
  Sorry what does PE mean here. Thanks
  - MisterTea 1y ago
    Private Equity.

cl3misch 1y ago

This advice could be translated 1:1 to ADHD (at least in my experience). You have to be very mindful with your attention and energy levels. I'm wondering if some underlying mechanism in the brain is similar between having ADHD and having suffered a stroke. Or maybe it's just the conscious effort how to handle the symptoms that's similar.

accrual 1y ago
In my experience it feels more like the latter - a similar way to manage symptoms rather than a similar root cause. From the article it sounds like OP knows exactly where to spend attention and focus, but needs to guard it carefully (and manage expectations) or else risk falling from their island of stability.
triggercut 1y ago
My father recently had a stroke, we both have ADHD, his is untreated. Since the stroke, most of his impacts have been cognitive, not muscular and most of his cognitive issues relate to worsening executive functioning across all executive functions, but particularly exacerbating the worst issues attributed to ADHD. As you would know ADHD is a problem with regulation, not capacity however with this stroke it appears that his capacity has fundamentally changed and is further impacted by the dysregulation. It's still early, and we haven't seen the specialist yet but I'm taking this hypothesis to them and (if I remember to) will update/edit here with their response.

wonderwonder 1y ago

Question to the OP or anyone else that has experienced something similar. Have you tried grey area or Peptide space medications like Dihexa, P-21, Semax, etc to see if there are any benefits there? Very much self experimentation but they do work in mouse models as well as Russian medicine. I'm not encouraging anyone to experiment, just interested to see if anyone that has undergone experiences like OP's has experimented. I have not experienced a stroke or similar but I just started a 6 - 8 week Dihexa course, low dose to test tolerance and I find I am experiencing benefits such as improved recall. I am learning guitar as my test suite. Something I have attempted multiple times before and given up on relatively quickly. 2 weeks in so far. My intention is to drop the Dihexa at week 8 and then switch to Semax. The theory being that Dihexa improves synaptogenesis but inhibits pruning. Semax allows for pruning but optimizes the efficiency of existing used synapses. Dihexa is an experimental Alzheimer's medication and Semax is a Russian post stroke drug

accrual 1y ago

Thank you for sharing this. Keep up the good work and healing, OP! It's incredible that you've continued to be polite and to do as much as you can through your health struggle. Setting and enforcing boundaries can be difficult for some, especially when you're feeling hazy and not operating at 100%. I like that you pointed out being polite can be expensive sometimes. This is excellent advice for anyone with knowledge based work though. Distractions, messages, pop-ups, asks, meetings, etc. are the leading reason I don't get as much done as I could. Some of your items could definitely help here.

consumer451 1y ago

I have not had a stroke, but a few years ago I noticed my eyesight was getting strange. There were many other things including a very fuzzy brain, and wanting to stay in bed for weeks. I thought I was just sad until the eyesight issue. It turned out I had Advanced Neurological Lyme disease. It took a couple years to recover from it. I also have Cluster Headaches, one of the most painful medical conditions known to science. Losing my the ability to think clearly, was worse. As someone who uses my brain for work, the depression that arose from losing my mental faculties was very significant. I searched TFA for depression and did not see a mention. If anyone is dealing with a neurological issue like this, I would imagine that second order effects like depression are common, correct?

odyssey7 1y ago

Oh gosh, even with the laws that should provide cover, the pushback you’ll encounter in academia from so many individuals with limited life experience who are trained only to rigidly follow blanket policies. But if you feel like you won’t speak up because it’s not that bad, remember the next person who will come after you. When you have the capacity to push systems to do better, it’s better for everyone if you exercise it.

underlipton 1y ago

I think AI as it's currently implemented is a plague upon humanity, but I do appreciate it helping me to locate the word that's on the tip of my tongue and which my battered brain can't seem to draw a neural route to, so that I'm not sitting there for 20 minutes trying to fight the Einstellung effect and brain fog.

theturtle 1y ago

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sonicggg 1y ago

Isn't it better to prevent than remediate it? It's not rocket science. Mediterranean diet, daily nattokinase, absolutely no alcohol at any time, exercise

eternalreturn 1y ago

Going through several panic attacks with stroke-level blood pressure elevation had a similar impact on my worldview and approach to work. Slow down. Prioritize your own health and well-being. Focus on the essentials and cut out everything else. If you are in pain, see a doctor before you end up in urgent care like I did.

ericye16 1y ago

Are there types of disability insurance you can buy that would cover you as a software engineer in case something like this happens and you're not able to go back to work or not work as effectively in this field? Does anyone have experiences with this?

chillz2 1y ago

Some of these apply to other neurodivergents like myself. One thing I struggle with is that the only time I seem to really get in the flow is when no one is around and no one else is working. Some form of stimulant is needed, but no stimulant I can use gets me to the point where I can get into more flow than I can when no one is around. I sometimes dream of how much I could do if I just lived at my office alone. This is sad and frustrating, because I don’t want that life where I cannot have a life of my own and where I cannot interact with people at work or it disables my ability to get things done. Nutrition and some form of exercise are also incredibly important, especially as you get older. Not everyone needs the same things, so don’t let others tell you what is the “right thing for everyone”- there’s no such thing.

bigolnik 1y ago

Hey folks, my wife is a speech language pathologist who specializes in stroke rehab, I sent her this post and this comment section and she sent me this to share: As a stroke/neuro rehab speech-language pathologist that is married to a web dev/engineering manager (that obviously sent me this blogpost), everyone reading needs to listen to this author's sound advice for prevention of CVA as well as for post-stroke management. We are seeing younger age strokes more frequently, especially those with jobs that are high stress and low physicality (read: you folks!). Thank you to the writer for spreading this info and awareness… I can confirm it is not as niche as one might think and for best outcomes you have to respond FAST (look at Face, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to call 911). PSA of the day!

AbstractH24 1y ago

Wow, this article resonated so much more than I expected when I clicked on it. Mostly because I have epilepsy without the stroke, and after decades of it being stable, around 2021 it got a bit harder to control and started to interfere with my daily living for the first time. A couple points I'd add/double down on: 1. Find yourself a team of really good folks to work with who treat you as a human - At the peak of my epilepsy acutely interfering with my life, I was at a startup that, after being devastated by lockdowns, decided to scale down from 100 employees to 6 and start over. When I told the founder I'd need a month off twice within the span of 4 months for some very invasive surgeries, I fully expected him to let me go, as he was legally permitted. He told me to take all the time I needed, and for that I'll forever be indebted. 2. Avoid the urge to "other" yourself - the only brain we're exposed to 24/7 is our own. That makes it easy to lose track of what's baseline and easy to assume every time you forget something or otherwise "glitch," it's a sign you are flawed in ways others aren't. That's not true, everyone forgets things. 3. It takes time to recover emotionally - This week marks 3 years since my last big surgery, and I'm just past 2 since things started to really stabilize. Only in the last few months have I stopped walking around constantly viewing myself through the lens of a condition and with a sense of self-doubt and "othering". So be kind and patient with yourself. It takes time. 4. Reddit has some very supportive communities to help answer questions and remind you that you're not alone (including r/epilepsy). But don't get overly involved in them for too long, because then it becomes easy to define yourself and your tribe through your medical condition. 5. If epilepsy or some other condition prevents you from getting a driver's license, there's a lot to say for living in NYC or SF. Two of the only places in America where it's completely normal to live without a car and you wont stand out or feel excluded.